COLUMN: Trump renames a lake by decree, and Ottawa asks a street for permission

The sign on Merivale Road

Wednesday, September 23

On Wednesday, September 23, Ottawa city council voted unanimously to take Donald Trump’s name off a residential street.

A street sign. Metal, a blade, a name.

Trump Avenue, in the Central Park neighbourhood, near Merivale Road.

The sign is still up. Nobody has unscrewed it. It will stay up for months.

That detail is the one that interests me.

A street shaped like an S

The street bends into an S. It has about 65 homes, according to the New York Times.

It crosses other streets with New York names: Bloomingdale Street, Whitestone Drive, Staten Way.

The neighbourhood was named in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Trump was a New York real estate developer at the time. Nothing more.

A suburban street is driveways, recycling bins on Thursday, kids learning to ride a bike on the sidewalk. Nobody lives there for the name.

We read a street sign on the day we are hunting for an address. After that, never again. Then one day, it starts to talk.

A sign never changes its meaning. The world around it does.

A vote with no debate

One voice at the microphone

River ward councillor Riley Brockington had tabled his motion on September 9.

On the 23rd, it passed with no comment from anyone but him, CBC reports.

He spoke of a fresh start for residents. He said he no longer wanted to give a platform to the man whose name is on the sign.

Nobody contradicted him. Nobody backed him at the microphone either. They voted.

Brockington had called the current name an embarrassment, according to Newsweek, citing CBC.

A unanimous vote is rare. So is a vote with no debate. Together, they say one thing: the matter was settled before anyone walked into the chamber.

The mayor, after the vote

Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said he dislikes the idea of anything bearing the name of a man who has shown hostility toward Canada, according to the New York Times.

The motion itself, according to Global News, states that the name would meet none of the criteria had it gone through a real commemorative naming process.

There was no shortage of suggestions. Councillor Tim Tierney listed a few to CNN, according to Newsweek: Obama Avenue, Pelosi Avenue, Gulf of Mexico Avenue. Others too, more mocking.

Mockery was within easy reach. The city chose procedure.

In other words, this sign should never have existed.

And yet it has stood for more than twenty years.

Twenty years of silence, then a vote in seconds.

Thirty days to rename a lake

Thursday, August 27, the Oval Office

We have to go back a month. The order came first, and it explains everything.

On August 27, 2026, Donald Trump signed executive order 14422, which renames Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

The text gives the secretary of the interior 30 days, working with the Board on Geographic Names, to make the change. It orders every mention of Lake Ontario struck from the federal registry of names.

The order reaches far. Every federal map, every contract, every document of the administration must carry the new name, according to its text.

No consultation is planned. A unilateral order, the researchers writing in The Conversation note. One signature.

A lake. A pen. Thirty days.

Two days later, Google

On August 29, Google wrote that the American registry had formally changed the name. Thirty days allowed. Two days to carry it out.

The decree: two days. The street: months.

Here is how I read Ottawa’s vote. It is not the new name that answers Trump. It is the slowness.

A decree gets signed alone. A street, here, gets consulted.

A lake renamed without asking, a street that asks.

Nine icebreakers out of eleven

What the order invokes

The order deserves a reading. It has its arguments, and not all of them are hollow.

It invokes the Coast Guard: the United States supplies 9 of the 11 icebreakers on the Great Lakes, it says. It invokes money: nearly $4 billion invested over ten years in the Great Lakes ecosystem, against far less on the Canadian side, by its count. It invokes history: Fort Oswego, the War of 1812 at Sackets Harbor.

It claims the deepest part of the lake lies in American territory, and that the United States therefore claims most of its volume. It speaks of hundreds of thousands of American jobs tied to shipping on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence.

Those are its figures. I report them as its own.

Ontari’io

Even if true, they do not make a name. Nobody renames a shared lake for owning more icebreakers.

Mark Carney recalled, according to Newsweek, that the word Ontario comes from Wendat. He renders it this way: the lake is beautiful, the lake is great.

The name is older than both countries. The order is one month old. The lake does not vote. The lake signs nothing.

Renaming an ally’s lake is a bad move. It arms no one against Beijing or Moscow. It humiliates a neighbour.

We can count icebreakers. Nobody counts a name.

MapQuest says no

Google’s rule

The order binds only the American federal government. It can impose nothing on Canada, or on private mapmakers.

Google applied it anyway. Its rule, written on August 29: update its maps according to official government sources.

In the United States, users now see “Lake America.” In Canada, “Lake Ontario.” Elsewhere, both names.

Apple made the same choice for its American users, according to CBS News. On Google, in the United States, a search for Lake Ontario now leads to “Lake America,” again according to CBS News.

A federal registry was enough. Not a law. Not a treaty.

Number one in downloads

MapQuest refused as early as August 27. The company wrote that it was not changing the name, according to CBS News.

A Denver company, born in 1996, said no. Its app became the top free app in Apple’s store. Its use rose roughly fiftyfold, again according to CBS News.

Two giants followed the registry. A service many thought forgotten followed the lake. So did the users.

The market ruled one way. The giants, the other.

A map obeys the registry, or the people who read it.

68% of Americans

August 28 to 31

The order does not speak for Americans. YouGov measured that for The Economist, from August 28 to 31.

68% of Americans disapprove of the name change. 17% approve.

Democrats disapprove at 85%. Independents, at 77%. Even Republicans lean slightly toward disapproval: 41% against, 37% for.

MAGA supporters apart

Only Republicans who call themselves MAGA approve: 47% for, 29% against. Other Republicans disapprove at 67%.

The same poll notes a record: 22% of Americans now see Canada as unfriendly or an enemy.

And 58% oppose higher tariffs on Canadian goods.

On this side of the border, the mood is well known. TIME cites an Abacus poll from early September: 82% of Canadians hold a negative view of Trump. Political scientist Thomas Juneau, of the University of Ottawa, sees the vote as one illustration of that mood.

The order is not America. It is a decision, signed by one man, backed by a minority. A loyal minority. A minority all the same.

Ottawa is not voting against a people. It is taking down a name.

Two Americans in three would have left the lake alone.

The gesture the White House calls empty

The White House to TIME

The White House answered. Its spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, dismissed the vote as a gesture without meaning, according to TIME.

I have to grant her one thing. She is partly right. On tariffs, yes. On meaning, no.

Renaming a street does not lower a single tariff. A new round of 50% duties hit Canadian goods earlier in September, Global News recalls. Canada answered with matching duties, according to CBC.

No factory reopens because a sign comes down. No job comes back.

In early September, in a CBS News story about the lake, a White House spokeswoman said the administration was fighting very hard to protect American industries and workers.

And yet, one month earlier

And yet, one month earlier, it was the White House signing an order to change the name of a lake.

If Ottawa’s gesture means nothing, what did the one of August 27 mean?

Both are gestures. The difference lies elsewhere. One was signed alone. The other will have to win over a street.

And the gesture called empty still drew an answer from the White House.

Meaningless, they say, and yet they answer it.

Twenty-one against twenty-one

January 2021

This is not the first attempt.

In 2021, after Trump’s first term, Brockington surveyed the residents. 21 in favour. 21 against. 20 with no answer, according to The Conversation.

The rule back then required more than half the residents. Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty. The project died.

Many opponents feared the hassle of changing their address, CBC reports.

The price of an address

I understand those twenty-one. I don’t look down on them.

A person can hate a name and love the house. A person can find the sign embarrassing and dread the paperwork.

In 2021, the name won by default. In 2026, council votes unanimously. In between, a lake.

The 21-to-21 split was a snapshot of a neighbourhood. Not of a country. Nobody, in 2021, was forced. That is what makes 2026 possible.

And yet the decision does not belong to council. It belongs to the street.

Twenty-one for, twenty-one against, and the sign stayed.

75% plus one

The city’s rule

Since 2021, the bar has risen. It now takes more than 75% of the street’s residents and owners, The Conversation writes.

The city’s commemorative naming policy spells it out. It takes a road renaming application. It takes a non-refundable fee to file it. It takes approval from 75% plus one of residents and owners. It takes the ward councillor’s concurrence. It takes a check by Building Code Services. It takes a sixty-day public consultation.

Six conditions. Facing them, a decree. It fits in one signature.

Sixty-five doors

The same policy discourages changes to commemorative names. It does allow a review when the person honoured, still living, no longer meets the criteria that earned the honour.

The city can even decline to go ahead if the change is not operationally or financially responsible, its policy says. An exit. Written in advance.

Brockington will lead the consultation. A working group will study names. The new one could keep the New York theme, or move away from it, he said, according to Global News. The goal: a new name before the next council in April, May or June, according to CBC.

Sixty-five doors, roughly. It will take three-quarters of them, plus one.

It takes three-quarters of a street to undo a signature.

What an address costs

Without moving house

Here is what we forget when we applaud a vote.

A change of address without a move is a strange thing. No boxes to pack. Only papers to redo.

A change of address is the driver’s licence. A change of address is the health card. A change of address is the bank, the insurer, the employer, the children’s school. A change of address is explaining to the courier that the house has not moved.

The name being taken from Trump is, first of all, somebody’s address.

The lake has no address. Nobody redoes a licence because an American registry calls it something else. The order picked a target that forces no one to fill out a form.

The name on the envelope

There is an envelope we open in the front hall, with our name and our street on it. The paper makes a small, dry sound. We stopped reading the address long ago.

For sixty-five households, the address has become an opinion.

I admit I would have voted for it. I admit, too, that I would not have enjoyed redoing my papers for a foreign president.

The sign now weighs on the people who live beneath it. Not on the man whose name it bears.

He will fill out no form. A street pays. A lake, never.

The order costs its signer nothing. The sign costs the street.

The diplomacy of names

Glasgow, 1986

Researchers call it toponymic diplomacy, write Reuben Rose-Redwood, CindyAnn Rose-Redwood and Derek H. Alderman in The Conversation.

In 1986, a square in Glasgow near the South African consulate was renamed Nelson Mandela Place, against apartheid. Streets and squares near Russian embassies and consulates were renamed in support of Ukraine. In 2023, a Donald Trump Square in Petach Tikvah, Israel, became United States Square.

A name is a letter a city sends to a country. Short. Legible. Dated.

Morocco, Hyderabad

Other governments do the opposite, the authors note. A 655-mile highway bears the president’s name in Morocco. A Donald Trump Avenue exists in Hyderabad, India.

The researchers see a tribute turned into a bargaining chip in negotiations.

Ottawa does the reverse. It withdraws a tribute instead of offering one.

It buys nothing. It begs for nothing.

Glasgow did it against a regime. Ottawa does it against a signature.

It joins another family of cities. The ones that renamed a square for Mandela. The ones that renamed a street for Ukraine.

Some offer a highway. Ottawa takes back an avenue.

Eight Trumps on the map

Islands, lakes, a creek

Canada has eight official geographic places named Trump, according to The Conversation. None was named for the president.

There are the Trump Islands, in Newfoundland and Labrador. There are Trump Lake and Trump Creek, in Ontario. There was a Trump Lake in Quebec. It now bears the French name for Porcupine Lake.

The only official honour paid to the man is this Ottawa avenue.

The islands, the lakes, the creek will keep their names. They owe nothing to the president. Their names are older than his career.

Five years after death

The Ontario Geographic Names Board does not support commemorative names until five years after the person’s death, the authors point out. It has no authority over Ottawa’s streets.

The rule is wise. A living man can change. He can even rename a lake. The name stays. The honour leaves.

And yet Ottawa did the opposite, for a mere neighbourhood theme.

If the street says no…

Nobody engraves a living man on a metal sign.

A street that decides

Two ways to name a place

A president renamed a lake shared by two countries, against the wishes of two Americans in three. Google followed within two days, Apple shortly after.

A city may rename a street, if three-quarters of its residents want it. In the spring, at best.

I prefer slowness. Slowly. Cleanly. Street by street. It is proof that here, a name belongs to the people who live on it.

It is not weakness. It is a border.

On one side, a name decided from above and applied by corporations. On the other, a name submitted to the people who get the mail.

The sign, come spring

If it were your address, would you vote to change it?

The sign will stay on its street this winter. It will know the salt, the ice, the wind whistling through the posts. It will wait for the snow, then for the neighbours.

The decree took two days. Permission will take as long as it takes.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• White House — Executive Order 14422 renaming Lake Ontario, August 27, 2026
• Google — applying the name change in Maps, August 29, 2026
• YouGov — Economist/YouGov poll of August 28–31, September 1, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CBC News — Ottawa council votes to rename Trump Avenue, September 23, 2026
• The New York Times — Ottawa turns the page on Trump Avenue, September 23, 2026
• The Conversation — place-name politics and Trump Avenue, September 9, 2026